The next morning, Inez called.
She had found the property from the map.
We met at the county office.
The clerk brought out records so old they smelled like dust and cardboard.
The parcel was seventeen acres.
Most of it was wooded.
There was a collapsed agricultural building near the road.
Ownership had changed twice since Esteban Ruiz.
Then Inez reached the final page.
Her eyebrows rose.
“What?”
She turned it toward us.
The current owner was something called MCR Holdings Trust.
Trustee: Manuel C. Ruiz.
Dad stared.
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Inez flipped through the documents.
The trust had been created by my grandfather.
Dad had been named successor trustee.
But apparently nobody had ever notified him properly after my grandfather’s death.
For forty years, minimal property taxes had been paid automatically from a small account attached to the trust.
“How much is it worth?” Derek asked.
